Tony Lucca wasn’t the only cast member of “The All New Mickey Mouse Club” not to become a superstar, but he may be the most talented not to achieve that level of success.

The show, which aired on The Disney Channel from 1989-95, had a cast that included Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, Justin Timberlake and fellow ’N Sync member JC Chasez, and actors Keri Russell and Ryan Gosling.

Lucca, who was on the show 1991-94 — one of just a few to stay three seasons — later had brushes with superstardom. He was an opening act on ’N Sync’s 2001 Pop Odyssey Tour. And he was Russell’s boyfriend for eight years (and co-starred with her in the TV series “Malibu Shores”) before her career took off with “Felicity.”

For the past 10 years, Lucca has pursued music as an independent artist, building a fine catalog of pop and bluesy records, opening for artists such as Sara Bareilles and occasionally getting a song on a TV show such as “Friday Night Lights.”

Last week, he released an EP with like artists Matt Duke and Jay Nash, with whom he toured last year. He’s working on a full new disc for release next year, and is again on the road, playing more intimate venues, including Philadelphia’s Tin Angel on Wednesday.

In a call from the tour road in Georgia, Lucca talked about his career, the careers of his fellow cast members, and more:

More and more these days I’m speaking with artists who are choosing to remain independent artists rather than sign with major labels. And with more than 10 years in the business, explain to me your situation and why you are where you are.

“You know, there’s been a lot of ups and downs for me with regard to momentum, you know, little fits and starts of making various efforts to do the dog and pony show [laughs] in terms of trying to garner label attention and what not. I actually sort of ventured into the realm of distribution on a couple projects – getting the record in stores and onto the Internet via a major distributor, which was cool and it certainly has had its rewards.

“But as of late I’ve returned to the independent thing, more so out of just the economics of it, as of late. I put out two records through a distributor, and neither of them broke, so to speak. And there was no major video or radio buzz to speak of, so there wasn’t a ton of money in the marketing campaign for either record. Which, distribution without marketing is really kind of just a waste of money, because even just the marginal expenses of pressing and shipping records to retail and doing various cross-marketing and co-op things that distributors do, that costs the distributor money that then is, of course, recoupable per your sales. So if you as an artist don’t have a bankroll or investor or some kind of marketing purse, you’re not really going to do much at retail, and so you’re going to be selling records and just trying to pay off what you owe your distributor. Which is kind of what ended up happening with the two records prior to my latest effort.

“And so I just decided that I know that the paradigm has shifted, with things like CD Baby and Amazon and iTunes now, there’s just so many avenues for artists to do it themselves. And also curiosity – I just wanted to see just how much money and how much success I could achieve in doing it myself – just to kind of see what my fan base is like, see where my market is and find out after all these years where I stood. And so far it’s been pretty fascinating, you know? It’s been profitable, to say the least, and really encouraging and it’s been inspiring to just keep going and stay at it.”

I saw you toured with Sara Bareilles. How did that come about? (Continued)

“I came to find out there are a lot of different people and friends and associates and people that I know kind of putting it out there into the universe, ‘cause a lot of people for whatever reason thought that it would be a good fit and wanted to see it happen. I had met Sara briefly once in L.A. We did a songwriters in the round night and we were both part of the bill and so we met and shared the stage once, but that was the first and last time. And then since then, she had her meteoric rise and so I hadn’t been in touch with her at all. Come to find out that she actually had put it out to her management that she was looking for someone new to come out and she was doing an acoustic tour, so she wanted an acoustic artist. And so she had mentioned it to her management, who was in touch with my management. I recent just signed to RockRidge Music, their management division, and they were in touch with her people and said Tony would love to head out with her; we have a tour going out and we’d like to put the beasts together. So it was her people called my people, that sort of thing [Laughs]. And so far, so good.”

But let me make a point here that you’ve had success getting your music out there – it’s been on television shows. Apparently people know who you are.

“Yeah, it’s kind of if you stay at something long enough and you continue to kind of grow and mature and progress creatively and business-wise, as well. I’ve made a lot of relationships; I’ve met a lot of really great people. I met a lot of not-so-great people, but … [Laughs]. That’s just the nature of the beast, as well. But yeah, I’ve had a lot of lucky breaks along the way, and was sort of at the right place at the right time for some things and a lot of influential people out there that were into what I was doing. And so yeah, a lot of really wonderful opportunities over the years that have sort of enabled me to keep going and to sort of watch a perpetual growth and progress. So it’s been a cool little ride.”

You sort of touched on the process of maturing. And I was wondering – you’re 33.

“Hendrix and Morrison and Janis were all dead before 33. It does put things in perspective.”

What kind of growth or development in your musical tastes have you seen in those years?

“You know, ironically, it’s a return to the basics, the building blocks, the original ideas, the original things that sort of inspired me in the first place – the rock ‘n’ roll, the classics. I finally, in the last few years, decided to start studying The Beatles [laughs]. Not just the ‘eveybody loves The Beatles, everybody identifies and recognizes The Beatles.’ But to really listen to them from like a pupil sort of perspective and to really take in what they were doing structurally, as far as their arrangements and their melodies and just the way they structured a pop song and did it better than anyone. Brevity, and how to keep it concise. I look back on my first album that I made over 10 years ago and there was maybe one or two songs under four minutes. The rest of them were four, five, some even close to six minutes long. And I saw no reason to trim or edit any of that at the time. It was all precious to me, it was all important and I was trying to say something a little more, uh … hell if I know now. But at the time they all made sense and it was what I wanted. Now I take pride I being able to write a song that has three chords and three verses and two bridges and a guitar solo all under three minutes. There’s a bona fide art – it’s a craft – that I’ve really grown to recognize and work on.

“As well, lyrically, I’ve always done the best I could, per my age and my experience and I’ve always tried to say things that I wouldn’t be afraid to say five, 10 years from now, or look back on and say, ‘Oh, yeah, well, that was so sophomoric or so naïve.’ And there’s some things along the way, obviously, that you look back on and you identify as being your early work. But I think really trying to home in on that lyrical sensibility that is from a timeless place and says more by saying less. And that’s something that I’ve steadily been working on over the years.”

Do you constantly write? Do you have songs that you’re putting together now?

Lucca singing his 'Pretty Things'

“Yeah, you know, I am and I do. Not nearly as much as I need to. And that’s sort of the bittersweet thing about doing it yourself – being an indie artist is a 24/7 gig – you have to work at it diligently and wear a lot of different hats. And unfortunately, the creative time can get marginalized along the way if you don’t make more of a discipline of it. But when you’re touring, it is sometimes difficult to find the time and the space to get in there. And then when you’re not touring, you’re kind of always at the computer hashing out the next tour or trying to etching out the next stage of my career. I used to freak out a bit more about it and get real nervous about not writing as much as I should or felling like I’m never going to write again [Laughs]. But the more I realize that to me, making records now is like – it’s almost like a campaign. It’s almost like an election campaign, where you decide that you’re going to make a record and so you start to put together the songs you want. And that’s the time you really need to dedicate towards writing and being creative and really figuring out the things you want to say and how you want to say them.

“But then, once you make the record, it’s a matter of trying to do as much as you possibly can with that record and then that’s when you set the guitar down and pick up the laptop and the cell phone and you start entering that portion of the process and so then you look at the record cycle as pretty much a year to 18 months from the time you’re ready to make another record to the time you feel like you’ve done as much as you canto promote it before you go back to the drawing board on the next one. So that’s kind of the formula I have now, but fortunately with songwriting you never know, you never know when it’s going to hit you, and sometimes you gotta just stop everything you’re doing and get it out – which I always try to keep my ear open, too.”

I hope you don’t get sick of people asking this, but do you still have any contact with people from the years in The New Mickey Mouse Club? Do you still talk to any of those people?

“I do, yeah. There’s a good number of them that I still keep in touch with. We all established a tremendous sense of family and lifelong friendships. Even those that I don’t see that often or ever, if and when I were to see them, the bond would remain. I occasionally will talk to Justin but it’s been some time since I last spoke with him. Ryan Gosling in my neighborhood now out in L.A., so I’ll see him occasionally. And they’re just as excited to see me as I am to see them, which feels good and reassuring, to know that, OK, yeah, it really was that special, it really was that cool. There’s a lot of other Mouseketeers that have not gone on to achieve as much fame, but are nonetheless all equally a part of that kinship. And so I keep in touch with a lot of them still, as well.”

The number of talented people that came out of that show: Do you think it was because they chose talented people as cast members, or do you think there was something about that show that helped develop people?

“I would immediately say it was a bit of both, if that’s not an easy out of answering your question. But Matt Casella, the casting director, has an impeccable eye for talent. He really bats 1.000. There were acouple of times maybe, where he was off [laughs] but he cast some pretty big projectsover the years, but the Mouse Club was definitely his crowning achievement in that he identified something in all of us that he just see in other people. He realized that there was an inherent passion and desire and ability in all of us.

“At the same time, there were some of the best people in the business hired in to work on The Mickey Mouse Club, and we received some training from some really phenomenal people – really incredibly talented people vocally, the dance, the choreographers we worked with, the vocal coaches, and the various directors – people that had been brought in to work on this silly, silly children’s television show [Laughs]. But nonetheless, the building blocks were all there. And it literally was like boot camp for the entertainment industry. Whatever it was you were into, you had a really rock-solid, hands-on experience of learning it and doing it day in and day out. So everything from us learning how to give interviews [Laughs]. The basics: How to present yourself, how to carry yourself, how to be a personality, all those things that I can still identify with when I watch Justin get up and address a national audience of people watching the Grammys. You know, I can see it [Laughs]. I see the training that he had as a kid.

“So it was both the casting and of course the actual show itself.”

That’s amazing and very cool that whatever that was, you can still see it. I wanted to mention that as I prepared for this interview, I read an interview with Keri Russell in which she mentioned you. So you’re still in their thoughts, like you said.

“Yeah, Keri’s another one. You know, she‘s remained dear friend over the years. Her and I were, obviously, exceptionally close, ‘cause we were together and lived together for some years. But we’ve both grown up and moved on in our lives and remain very good friends with one another.”

Anything else you’d like to add?

“I think the main ingredient to what I’m doing and have been doing over the years and the reason why I’m still at it is merely a testament to my fans. I am extremely blessed and fortunate to have had the history that I have had, and the opportunities I’ve had, that the fans that have come along with me along the way really have made it all such a fantastic ride and continue to be a life support for what I do. So I just want to make a note that I try be thankful every chance I get. [Laughs].”

JOHN J. MOSER has been around long enough to have seen the original Ramones in a small club in New Jersey, U2 from the fourth row of a theater and Bob Dylan's born-again tours. But he also has the number for All-American Rejects' Nick Wheeler on his cell phone, wrote the first story ever done on Jack's Mannequin and hung out in Wiz Khalifa's hotel room.

OTHER CONTRIBUTORS

JODI DUCKETT: As The Morning Call's assistant features editor responsible for entertainment, she spends a lot of time surveying the music landscape and sizing up the Valley's festivals and club scene. She's no expert, but enjoys it all — especially artists who resonated in her younger years, such as Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, Tracy Chapman, Santana and Joni Mitchell.

KATHY LAUER-WILLIAMS enjoys all types of music, from roots rock and folk to classical and opera. Music has been a constant backdrop to her life since she first sat on the steps listening to her mother’s Broadway LPs when she was 2. Since becoming a mother herself, she has become well-versed on the growing genre of kindie rock and, with her son in tow, can boast she has seen a majority of the current kid’s performers from Dan Zanes to They Might Be Giants.

STEPHANIE SIGAFOOS: A Jersey native raised in Northeast PA, she was reared in a house littered with 8-tracks, 45s and cassette tapes of The Beatles, Elvis, Meatloaf and Billy Joel. She also grew up on the sounds of Reba McEntire, Garth Brooks and Tim McGraw and can be found traversing the countryside in search of the sounds of a steel guitar. A fan of today's 'new country,' she digs mainstream/country-pop crossovers like Lady Antebellum and Sugarland and other artists that illustrate the genre's diversity.